Lorde

The set, which was released on June 16 through Lava/Republic Records, earned 109,000 equivalent album units in the week ending June 22, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 82,000 were in traditional album sales.

Lorde sat down with The Spinoff to go track-by-track through her latest album, Melodrama.

I wanted to [give the feeling of] just like the big sun-soaked dumbness of falling in love and it’s like your whole head is like glue, it’s amazing. It is like drugs. It’s like ‘I just want to be by you all the time, I just want to listen to you talk and look at your face do all those dumb things that it does when you talk. It’s just like this big dumb joy and it’s intense – and I feel like the instrumentation in that song kind of helped it get there.

No one’s feedback mattered to Lorde as much as Antonoff’s. When Max Martin heard “Green Light” shortly before its release, she told me, “he had a very specific opinion, which had to do with the melodic math — shortening a part.” Martin is probably the greatest pop craftsman alive. Since his late-’90s breakthrough he has written or co-written career-defining singles for Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Kelly Clarkson, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and the Weeknd. Lorde sought an audience with him a few years ago at his Los Angeles studio, and they stayed in touch. Martin described “Green Light” as a case of “incorrect songwriting,” Lorde said, clarifying that this “wasn’t an insult, just a statement of fact,” and one, furthermore, that she agreed with: “It’s a strange piece of music.” (The press-averse Martin declined to comment.)

Lorde’s new album is written and currently in the production stages. Because the internet is, well, the internet … we learned this after a “fan” posted on Lorde’s Instagram page asking, “Do you think we will ever get another album or should we just give up on you as an artist?” Lorde then responded:

give up on me if you want to! I’m an artist, I write a record when I have enough special stories to tell, and it’s all me, every melody every lyric, not some team who just start the machine up every eighteen months like clockwork. the record is written, we’re in the production stages now. I’ve worked like a dog for a year making this thing great for you guys

It’s only been three years since the last one. Try being a Brand New fan.